


something other than fear

by quantumoddity



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Canon Compliant, Casual Sex, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feelings Realization, First Time, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Little bit of angst, M/M, One Night Stands, and I'm so so sorry, lots of feelings really, second chapter is post Molly's death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-07-02 03:23:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15787938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumoddity/pseuds/quantumoddity
Summary: Caleb is suffering with memories of what happened on their last mission and Mollymauk tries to help him through it, until his friend makes an unexpected request





	1. Chapter 1

Mollymauk wasn’t sure what made him stop and say it. What turned a thought, a faint murmur, into action.

“You fellows go on ahead. I’m going to hang down here for a while.”

Fjord raised an eyebrow and gave a slight grunt, Beau feigned utter disinterest but a look passed between her and Jester who smirked a little but Jester was pretty much always smirking. They turned back to the winding, crooked steps up into the rafters of the towering inn, so tall it seemed to hunch over the road and beckon travellers with its golden eyes that promised flickering fireplaces, soft feather beds and the chance to stamp the dust from their boots. Exactly what the travellers needed, a good night’s sleep and the chance for their concerns to shrink down to what nightcap they wanted before bed and whether or not to listen to Jester’s rambling bedtime story, told as she marched up and down the trestle tables of the bar and accompanied by grand gestures and thaumaturgy enhanced sound effects. Rest and safety and laughter.

And, in Mollymauk’s opinion, no one needed that more than Caleb.

But there he stayed, like he was scared to move beyond the glow of the fire, sat so close that the flames turned his hair more copper than its usual bronze and deepened the shadows of his slack, exhausted face. He was deep in his third stein by this point, eyes hazy and what little speech he had offered during the evening slurred, and he showed no signs of slowing, much less of heading upstairs to a clearly sorely needed bed.

Molly had learned to read people very well in his time at the circus, for both survival and profit. He’d learned to recognise interest and coldness, innocence and scepticism, who he’d be able to sell tickets to at thrice the usual cost without even a hiccup and who would spit in his face and call him a devil if he so much as approached. The more time he spent with someone, the better he grew at reading their expressions, telling false from true. And after spending weeks with Caleb on the road, fighting for their lives and dodging jail cells, he could see the defeat and desperation clear as day on his face despite the painfully thin attempt at hiding it behind normalcy.

And he found himself completely unable to leave him.

“I hate to see anyone drinking alone,” he smiled hopefully as he slid back onto the bench next to Caleb, “Especially a friend.”

The wizard looked at him with a downturned, twisted mouth, “Is that you asking me to buy you a drink?”

“No, no,” Molly said quickly, wincing internally at his attempt to use his circus patter to cheer up his friend. Caleb wasn’t a mark to be shook for as many pennies as possible, he was someone he cared about who needed help.

Molly realised with a sinking heart that he clearly wasn’t the right person for this job. That would be Nott who, unfortunately, had drank a little too much and passed out at the table, carried up a little while ago by Jester to be tucked up at the foot of her bed and kept an eye on. So, all Caleb had was an emotionally stunted and self-absorbed tiefling. Not exactly what you wanted in the wake of an emotional breakdown.

Still, he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to try at the very least.

“Look, Caleb, we’re all exhausted after what happened,” he stepped a little more carefully this time, resting a hand on the man’s shoulder only lightly so it could be easily taken away if it caused awkwardness, “There’s a featherbed up there with your name on it and hopefully not too many fleas. Let’s call it a night, huh?”

Caleb gave a low grunt and pointedly drained the last few swallows of his ale, signalling for more without even skipping a beat.

“Is that such a good idea, my friend?” Molly quickly reached up and tugged at the sleeve of Caleb’s patched overcoat to bring his hand back down, “Take it from someone that’s had a lot of experience, the only thing you ever find at the bottom of that fourth drink is more problems.

“Why do you care what I do?” Caleb demanded, not pulling his arm away or fighting against his hold, his words angry but his eyes more desperate than anything. They begged for an answer.

Molly bit his lip for a few moments and decided to give one, an honest one at that, “Since I saw you hurting back there. Since I realised that you might be trying to drown out your thoughts about what happened in alcohol when a much healthier solution would be to just…talk about it?”

Caleb’s look of genuine surprise hurt Molly slightly; he didn’t know if it was dismay that anyone was willing to listen to him at all or that it was Mollymauk Tealeaf who was willing.

“I’m not…I’m not a talker,” he admitted gruffly after a pause, his accent thickened by the drink and the tiredness.

Molly hesitated, “You’re not a talker or you’re not used to having a listener?”

That raised a slight, wan smile on the wizard’s face and earned a chuckle that sounded like the wheezing of an old kettle after four pints of ale, “Both I think…” He pushed the glass, foam running down its interior like mist, his voice turning sad and small and making him sound much younger than he looked, “I’m just…I’m scared, Molly. The fear, it…clings to me. For hours, days, afterwards. I just want it to go away. I’m so sick of it…”

Molly’s grip on his shoulder tightened, became firm and present, “I know how that feels.”

Caleb looked at him, eyes clearer than they had been all evening, “You don’t look like someone who ever gets scared.”

Molly flashed his teeth in a grimace, “Yes and I’ve worked very, very hard to make it seem that way. But looking is not being, you understand. I’m as lost and scared as any of you, I just hide it better.”

God, the shit Mollymauk came out with when he let his guard down even a little. He felt his insides shift and writhe uncomfortably but he couldn’t make it come back up again, not when Caleb suddenly looked at him with so much hope, the look of a man in the middle of a storm who’d sees the light of an approaching ship.

“Any way you could teach me?” Caleb smiled feebly, “To hide it?”

Molly slid his arm around Caleb’s shoulders, “Even if I could, I wouldn’t. I don’t recommend it, Caleb. Feeling bad stuff sucks but it’s the only way to get rid of it once and for all.”

Caleb snorted, running a hand through his hair and looking a little more like himself as he did, “You’d be a terrible therapist, Mollymauk.”

“Oh definitely,” he grinned back, “But my experience with a wide and colourful variety of questionable coping mechanisms basically makes me a walking cautionary tale.”

Something passed over Caleb’s face, not a darkness, but as if a thought had occurred to him that he didn’t quite know what to do with. A compulsion he knew he was going to follow but was still worried about the consequences. “Maybe…maybe something that seems questionable is what I want right now…”

Molly tilted his head, making the jewellery adorning his ears and horns ring slightly, “What do you mean?”

And then he knew exactly what Caleb meant.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t thought about it before, far from it. _Very_ far from it, truth be told. Rarely did Mollymauk encounter a tall, long haired, charming-in-a-scruffy-kind-of-way man like Caleb and not think about it. He was just stunned to find that Caleb felt the same way. He’d always seemed like a man who preferred the company of books to other people, who’d only see someone as loud and bright and vibrant as Molly as nothing more than an irritant, who only knew what went where in the bedroom because he’d seen a diagram in a textbook one time.

Caleb winced, taking Molly’s surprise for something else, panic draining what little colour lived in his pallor, “I mean…you don’t have to, of course, I’d never…I only…I...I’m not asking for a relationship, just one night…”

The tiefling stopped him with a hand on his knee, light but very present, “Caleb, I say this with the utmost sincerity, complete and total honesty, which you should know, is rather rare for me. I would _love_ to have sex with you. I just want you to be sure this is what you want.”

All the colour came rushing back in one instant, leaving the poor guy flaming red as his hair. He struggled with his words for a few moments, tripping over his tongue as his thoughts squirmed and bumped into one another, likely because of Molly’s hand on his thigh. Eventually he just took a deep breath and tried to be brave, “It is. I want to feel something other than fear right now. I don’t want to be alone.”

Something opened deep inside Molly’s chest, something reached out, strained, at those words. He’d never said them out loud but he knew he’d felt them more times than he wanted to admit.

“Not here,” he murmured, keeping his voice low, letting his hand trail further up Caleb’s leg before he took it away. There weren’t many people still in the common room at such a late hour, just a few shapes lingering in the shadowed corners and it was always good to be careful about whose thigh you touched and who might see and how they might feel about that,  “Your room, Nott’s with Jester. Fjord’s in mine and I think he’ll notice if I pull a naked wizard into my bed.”

Caleb nodded with a rough chuckle, dropping some copper from one of the seemingly endless inside pockets of his trench coat onto the table to cover his drinks, “I’m right behind you.”

As he swung his legs over the bench and started up the winding skeleton of the inn, Caleb’s steady, stoic footsteps right behind him, Mollymauk wasn’t sure if this counted as a successful attempt to cheer up his friend. He wasn’t even sure if this was a good idea. But he’d had more bad ideas than he could count on all his fingers and toes and with Caleb looking at him the way he was, with such clear and obvious desire, he couldn’t think of any other bad idea that had tasted so sweet in the moment.

And besides, it was just one night. One night between friends.

Caleb’s room was discreetly positioned at the end of the corridor, past the other rooms where their friends were hopefully sound asleep and not wondering what the hurried footsteps outside their doors were. Molly took a quick look around the room, smiling briefly to himself at how Caleb and Nott had managed to somehow turn it upside down and throw their belongings all over the place after only occupying it for a few hours at most. In the dim light, with the candles unlit, he could just make out bags piled on top of the trunk at the foot of the bed, spilling their contents onto the floorboards, books that were likely Caleb’s and odd coins and stones and oddments that were likely Nott’s, scattered all over the place. That was all he could take in before Caleb caught his attention again, a hesitant and shy hand on his arm.

“Kiss me,” Mollymauk said, voice gentle and inviting as he could make it. He couldn’t help but search for doubt in the wizard’s expression, any hint that he was having second thoughts.

But as Caleb leaned in, rested his hand against Molly’s cheek and let his eyes close, brushed their lips together, the rest of the night became an inevitability. After a single heartbeat, Molly deepened their kiss, pulling him closer by the shoulders and letting his mouth open. He felt Caleb shiver a little under all his layers and a soft noise reverberated through his chest, a gentle little whine that made Molly wonder why he’d ever waited so long to get this guy into bed.

But still, the tension in his stomach didn’t let up.

Sighing, he broke off, pulling away a little, his red eyes fixed on Caleb, “You need to promise me something, Mr Widogast.”

“What?” Caleb just seemed dismayed that their kiss had ended, his expression worried all of a sudden, like he was expecting criticism of his kissing technique.

“Please don’t hate me after this,” Molly sighed, “Don’t fuck me then regret it and decide you hate me. I don’t think I can lose you as a friend, Caleb, not after everything we’ve done.”

There was a long pause, seemingly while he absorbed those words, moonlight from the open windows playing off an expression that Mollymauk couldn’t quite read. When he did speak, his voice was quiet and gentle, “Have people…done that to you before?”

He could think of no reason not to be honest, cat was out of the bag, “Yes. A few times.”

“I would never do that to you, Mollymauk. You’re my friend, I care about you. I promise I won’t hate you, I don’t even think I possibly could…” his voice was sweet and sincere, his eyes honest, every trace of shyness was gone.

This time, it was Molly who kissed him, harder and more certain, pressing him back against the door.  

“Clothes off, fellah,” he grinned after he regretfully ended the kiss to gasp for air, fingers moving down to the laces of Caleb’s pants, “May I?”

Shrugging out of his coat and letting it land on the floor with a glassy rattle that hinted at all the treasures hidden in its many pockets, Caleb nodded enthusiastically, panting a little. His garments were quickly added to the clutter of the room and forgotten. He seemed to only realise that he was getting naked once the job was completely done, starting a little and flushing, hands twitching as if fighting the instinct to cover himself.

Molly quickly soothed him with a hand stroked admiringly down from his chest, a low purr beginning deep inside him, “Wow…I knew you were hiding some real goods under all that beige…”

Caleb grinned crookedly, “Come on…now you…”

Undressing promptly and efficiency at the command of lovers was one of Molly’s particular skills. In moments, his colourful robes became liquid vermillion and lavender on the floor and he was tumbling Caleb into the waiting bed. Another kiss filled the dark of the room with light gasps and sighs and moans as Molly ran his hands across the broad, tanned expanse of Caleb’s chest and felt his heartbeat hammering away like a bird trapped in a cage. He carefully parted the wizard’s legs with his own, ready to stop at the slightest bit of resistance, unsure if it was fear or excitement, but then Caleb threw his legs around Molly’s full hips and dragged him closer, sudden friction building between their legs.

“Hold on there, tiger,” he laughed breathlessly, untangling himself from the lazy knot of their limbs and reaching to the floor, to his abandoned cloak. After a few moments rummaging in the inside pockets, he returned with a small red glass vial of oil.

“Of course…” Caleb burst out laughing after a few moments of stunned blinking, “Of course you just have that on you…”

Mollymauk grinned, a little proud, “And aren’t you glad I did?”

“Yeah,” Caleb admitted, his pupils widening a little, blown out against the warm brown of his eyes, a colour that had always made Molly think of the pages of old books, “I am.”

He worked quickly, fingers soon shining slickly in what little light there was from the silken moon outside, “Have you ever done this before?”

“Not for a while,” his wizard looked almost embarrassed, eyes following Molly’s hand as it dipped between his thighs, out of his line of sight, “Not for quite a while…”

Molly smiled softly as he stroked his thumb lightly along the crease in Caleb’s body, letting the pressure linger, “I’ll make this as memorable as I can then, hmm?”

As he pushed into him, as his fingers dug into the tiefling’s shoulders, as he gasped and arched his back and pressed his face into his tangled purple hair, Caleb realised that Mollymauk didn’t make promises he didn’t intend to keep. Not any more.

Molly couldn’t have said how long it was between that moment and the white hot second where Caleb screamed his name and decorated their lower stomachs, a bare heartbeat before he lost himself entirely and spilled heat into his wizard, groaning through his teeth. Caleb shuddered and went limp underneath him, pulling Molly down with him as the back of his head hit the pillows.

“And how…was that?” Molly panted heavily, eyes half closed and heavy lidded, his forehead resting lightly against Caleb’s.

“I think it worked,” he smiled tiredly, gently tucking a violet lock behind a horn and out of his eyes, “Thanks Mollymauk.”

“Good, I’m glad,” he pulled out of him as gently as he could, rolling onto his back and sighing deeply, left in the empty echoes of his high to realise what they’d just done.

Neither of them seemed to know what to say. The moments rolled on thickly, Caleb wincing and shifting, pulling the blanket right up to his chin as if all the awkwardness that ale and recklessness had held back suddenly hit him at once. Molly waited for any kind of contact, a gentle word, even one of the gruff witticisms he’d come to expect from his friend, but there was just silence, the space between them that seemed to grow by the second and, eventually, the dull sickness as his heart hit the bottom of his stomach.

He’d actually let his hopes climb a little…

“Just…remember your promise, Caleb Widogast,” Molly mumbled, curling up in a tiny ball on his side and squeezing his eyes shut.

After a pause, a warm, gentle hand rested between his shoulder blades and the comforting weight of Caleb’s head settled against him. Molly was stunned but he wasn’t about to start asking questions, reaching back to hold his face and anchor them together.

“I do care about you, Mollymauk,” he whispered as his arms slid around his middle, “I mean it. I do. You’re a good friend.”

“I care about you too,” Molly murmured, pressing himself close and just enjoying the scent of smoke and wood and the warmth of Caleb’s arms around him for as long as he could.

However confused and chaotic the rest of his thoughts were, however more hopelessly tangled they would get after the second, third, fourth night they would spend together, that Molly knew for certain.

He cared about Caleb so much. Maybe together they had a chance to feel something other than fear.

All they could do was try.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That was before. This is after.
> 
> And there are things unsaid.

“I’m…I’m going to sleep.”

It was all Caleb could think to say. Though there was no real thought to it, the words barely even grazed him as they left his mouth, his eyes just stared straight ahead, his hands were slack at his sides. That was the worst part. As long as any of them had known Caleb, his hands had been the most animated part of him, never still, always twitching and flitting like nervous birds, making spell shapes in the air instinctively and punctuating the words that left his mouth. To see them still was a death in itself.

And none of them could stomach any more of that.

Nott, who’d asked the impossible question, her voice thick with tears, thought of reaching for one of his hands but the stillness frightened her too much.

“I could come with you?” she offered instead, grasping for anything to say to Caleb that could even approach comforting, even as that concept slipped further and further away from the group as the full reality of what had happened when they’d chased after the Iron Shepherds fully sank in.

The return of Jester, Yasha and Fjord should have been a celebration, a coming together, the group being whole again. And only now as they sat in the inn, the first hint of comfortable living they’d had in so long, they all were struck with the knowledge that the group never would be, never could be, whole again.

His absence was like a missing tooth still oozing blood, an open wound. Everyone’s eyes were constantly drawn to the space where he should be, the blankness right in the centre of them all that should be occupied with his colour, life and light. There was a fiddler playing badly in one corner of the taproom but they all knew he would be dancing, saying that bad music was better than none at all. There was a wine on offer behind the bar that was a deep, startling green and they all knew he would have ordered a glass, just to see if it would turn his tongue that colour. There were a group of people playing cards at a table they looked like they’d been occupying since time immemorial and they all knew he would have dragged Jester over and eagerly set her to playing with them, sitting back and watching the show. Even as they tried to fight it, the gut churning hollowness of everything that _should be_ was unavoidable.

Caleb couldn’t stand it any longer. So he’d pushed back his chair and headed for the stairs, staggering in his desperation to escape it. But Nott had called out after him.

_Where are you going? What are you going to do?_

Caleb had no answer. He didn’t know if he ever would.

“No,” he murmured, taking off up the stairs, leaving her behind.

 

The door closed behind him with a heavy finality. It was almost like a relief.

Because now he could break.

Caleb sank to his knees against the door, losing himself to heavy, wrenching sobs, the kind that seemed like they would never end and made pain scrape and ache in his ribs. He dug his nails into his arms, wanting some kind of purchase, something solid to hold on to so he could be sure he wasn’t utterly adrift but all he could feel was the deep well of shadow inside him.

All he could smell was the ghost of flowing blood in his nose.

Downstairs, the rest of them would be thinking of things that should be, dwelling on their own losses. But none of them would ever realise just how much Caleb had lost.

None of them had known. And now he could never tell them.

 

Some small part of his mind that had long ago learned to still operate on a base level while the rest of him tore and howled and shattered, summoned Frumpkin to him. The sensation of fur under his fingers as the little ragged cat did everything he could to comfort his wizard, that was the only thing that kept him from what felt like crying so hard, so endlessly, that every part of him turned to tears and drained away.

All inn bedrooms look the same after a while. Which meant that this one reminded him of a handful of other rooms – many but not enough, not nearly enough – where Molly had shown him how to feel alive again. Where he’d kissed him, held him, took him, made him realise that he could have all those things he’d been too frightened to ask for.

Caleb thought back on their last morning together, not so long ago as the clock ticked but it may as well have been two entirely different people, on an entirely different plane of existence. They’d woken late, buttery warm sunlight was already slipping cautiously behind the curtains into the room. Caleb’s eyelids had fluttered first and he’s yawned, stretched the sleep from his joints, turned and found the tiefling wrapped around him, arms around his middle, tail around one leg like an anchor.

He could have gotten up and started to get ready, he could have let a million concerns for the day into his mind. But he hadn’t. He’d stayed and held Molly tightly, watching him doze, watching the waking world find him and open his eyes, bringing a smile to his lips when he saw Caleb there. All he’d wanted in the world, in the universe, in all the universes was to hold Mollymauk.

Why had he let go? Why hadn’t he clung to him, kept him safe?

That morning, the words he’d never said had hovered on his lips, he’d felt them there. For a moment, he’d seemed certain he would say it. But then he’d lost his nerve.

Of course he’d said them after. After it was far too late. As he’d carried Molly back to the cart, hating how limp and grey he felt, everything that had made him so beautiful fled as if it had never been. He’d pressed his lips to his limp hair, when the others were far away and said it over and over and over again and still, it didn’t feel as if he’d said it enough.

Each one was another knife. Each one was another bead of Molly’s blood running from the horrible wound in his chest, through Caleb’s fingers and to the floor.

Still choking on the fleeing sobs, Caleb’s grasping, blind fingers found the necklace against his chest, the one Molly had given him. The others had thought it was just a little token, the ones Molly gave freely and willingly, but Caleb had known it’s significance and treasured it. It represented their little secrets, the nights they’d spent together when Nott thought Caleb was down in the bar and Fjord thought Molly was in the bath.

It represented their almost.

Lying on the floor, too tired, too overcome to move, Caleb pressed his lips to the pendant and murmured those words again. As if he could say them enough times and make up for never saying them to Molly while he was alive. While it could have mattered.

“I love you…” he whispered.

It was all he could think to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for this. I'm on Tumblr @mollymauk-teafleak if you'd like to yell at me. Please leave a comment!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on Tumblr, @my-dearesteliza if you'd like to check out my other CR fics as well as my writing for other fandoms like TAZ. I'd really super appreciate it if you left a comment!


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